37.
Irony Provides Relief

“TAKE A LETTER,” said Lord Okubo, in a loud voice.

His scribe was surprised for it was five o’clock the following morning and Lord Okubo himself had awakened him. But he dressed quickly and brought his brushes to the castle office, where he hurriedly ground his inkstones. Manjiro was there, too, waiting with his head bowed, but Lord Okubo only spoke to him to ask, “Do you still have those paragraphs you told me about, the ones which encourage deceit, the ones Lord Abe so stealthily copied down?”

The paragraphs had been pestering Manjiro, certain words and phrases from them running through his mind ever since the arrival of Fumiko’s note in the village, so he was surprised.

“Tsune had them last, I think,” he said, but he really had no idea where the copied page had gone.

The scribe had his brush ready, with clean paper on the table before him, but Lord Okubo kept his eyes on Manjiro. He knew his son was beset with the idea of killing himself, that were he to speak harshly to him now he might leave the room and pitch himself from the roof of the castle. He knew it and was of two minds; first understanding that he had but one remaining son in this world, and should do what he could to keep him alive, and second that they both ought to do it, that he really should take Manjiro into that secret room, and show him its pair of waiting knives.

Lord Okubo turned to face the castle wall, not speaking for some minutes, and when he turned back again he looked only at the scribe. “This letter is addressed to Lord Abe’s erstwhile aide, Ueno,” he said. “Stop me if I go too quickly, we have to get it right.”

He walked to the room’s window and looked out at the dark forest, suddenly remembering Masako’s marsh and the odd fact that, since he’d ordered its gates repaired a year ago, he had not been there to inspect them. He started dictating without a salutation:

“I believe that things have gone too far concerning the Americans,” he said. “I also believe that no one, not Lord Abe in the beginning, nor any of the members of the Great Council, not your worthy self, nor even my pitiable and recalcitrant son, Manjiro, could have foreseen how far they would go. Indeed, if anyone should have done so it was I…”

He paused when he heard Manjiro’s breath catch behind him, but continued without looking around.

“Though my mistakes weigh heavily on my heart, however, confessing them is not the purpose of this letter. Its purpose, rather, is to propose that we work toward the return of the Americans to their ships without further embarrassment to anyone. The government needs that to happen, I do not, that is the truth of the matter as it stands now.

“Therefore I will be traveling to Shimoda soon, where I will deliver the Americans to some representative of the realm, just as you will, at that same instant, deliver to me my eldest son’s severed head, as well as the man or men who murdered him.”

Lord Okubo stopped again, shocked at the sound of his own voice. He asked the scribe to read back what he had written. Except for the words “your worthy self” in the first paragraph, however, he thought the whole thing read well enough. He had the scribe remove those words and went on:

“I propose we meet four days hence and a day or two after Commodore Perry’s arrival in that rainy and overburdened town. I did not choose Shimoda because of the American arrival, but because it is close and I am too overburdened with grief and rage not to take ease where I can find it.”

When he stopped this second time Lord Okubo was wounded anew by the visions his words brought into focus. He drank some cold tea and stared at the scribe but could not go on. Rather, he saw Einosuke as a young boy leaning over his books in the castle; as a young and serious man, awaiting his father in the Great Council corridor. He had been strong when receiving the heinous news, but to actually speak the words, to put it all down on paper—this was more than the old lord could bear.

As the silence extended, from one minute to three and then longer, and as the first dead streaks of dawn came up through the rain, it was Manjiro, therefore, not Lord Okubo, who braved his own unending sorrow, cleared his throat, and spoke a few lines to finish the letter:

“We can no longer be held responsible for the safety of the two Americans, if Einosuke’s murderers, as well as his missing part, are not delivered to us,” he said. “The details of everything can be worked out later, by a personal meeting if necessary, but preferably by runner.”

Manjiro closed the letter with a high degree of formality, then waited until his father came back to himself, found his seal on the scribe’s table, and applied it to the paper.

So it was that while once Lord Abe threatened the foreigners’ lives, now it was they who were doing it, this pitiable father and son. Oddly, it was that very irony that seemed to provide some measure of relief, giving both men the will to go and rest for a few hours; to agree without speaking about it that, for these next few days at least, they would put their despair aside, stay alive in the world, and concentrate on that sweetest of all man’s follies: Revenge.